Sunday, April 22, 2018

Holy Water

'We ourselves
fix boundaries to the sanctuaries and precincts of the gods, so
that nobody may cross them unless he be pure; and when we
enter we sprinkle ourselves, not as defiling ourselves thereby,
but to wash away any pollution we may already have contracted .'3 There is abundant evidence from literature, vase
paintings, and excavation for these stoups of lustral water sited
at the entrance to sanctuaries, for the purification of those who
entered. In inventories, they appear as part of a temple's normal furnishing; Hero, in his Pneumatica, tells of a mechanical
device that gave forth lustral water at the drop of a coin.4 It is
very revealing for Greek conceptions of the sacred that in
Athens the agora, civic and political centre of the city, was
marked off by similar lustral stoups.